Reading for Kid (I)

 

11/07/2024 A belated post but a necessary memo for myself.

My second reading for the Read-for-kids event is an English poem by Thomas Nashe, Spring, the Sweet Spring. An unseasonal choice of a season-specific poem in a rainy time (July 2024). Given that the young audience is not entirely familiar with this foreign language, my approach is to make pleasant melody of sounds to appeal to their audio memory. This poem serves the function to me.

I first came across this poem when I was seventeen when an English tutor "sang" the refrain to me. Since then the melody of birds' sounds in Spring has stuck in my mind even though it took me another 10 years to recall and identify the poet again. It has been one of my favorite melody of words.

In preparation for the reading to allow the audience to visualize the sounds, I tried to identify the kinds of birds participating in the line "cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we, to-witta-woo!". They are cuckoo, nightingale, lapwing, and owl. But it troubled me as to which kind of owl it is. I went through a pool of recordings of different owls. Then I struck it lucky, when an owl in a recording hooted, "to-witta ..... wooo". The mystery was solved. It is a Tawny Owl.

Then the kids sang the line with me.

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Participating in the activity is fun, and it is a way to keep me feeling more alive in a stagnant muddle of oppressive feelings.